PUB HLTH 4281 - Health Economics

North Terrace Campus - Semester 2 - 2017

Health economics is the study of how scarce healthcare resources are allocated among competing interventions and among groups in society. This fully online course introduces basic concepts and practical issues faced by decision makers at all levels in the health system in allocating scarce resources so that the choices they make maximise health benefits to the population.
This course has three major strands:
(1) An introduction to key concepts of health economics (e.g. opportunity costs) and how better choices in resource allocation might be made. There will be an introduction to the demand for and supply of health services, fundamentals of markets and the price mechanism with a focus on the healthcare market.
(2) An introduction to economic evaluation in healthcare, with an emphasis on measuring and valuing health outcomes and the use of economic evaluation in health care decision making.
(3) An overview of the organisation of health care (provision and funding). The organisation and finance of the Australian health system will be specifically analysed and compared internationally.
There will also be a reflection on equity in healthcare and the relationship between equity and efficiency in priority setting.

Health economics is the study of how scarce healthcare resources are allocated among competing interventions and among groups in society. This fully online course introduces basic concepts and practical issues faced by decision makers at all levels in the health system in allocating scarce resources so that the choices they make maximise health benefits to the population.

This course has three major strands:
(1) An introduction to key concepts of health economics (e.g. opportunity costs) and how better choices in resource allocation might be made. There will be an introduction to the demand for and supply of health services, fundamentals of markets and the price mechanism with a focus on the healthcare market.
(2) An introduction to economic evaluation in healthcare, with an emphasis on measuring and valuing health outcomes and the use of economic evaluation in health care decision making.
(3) An overview of the organisation of health care (provision and funding). The organisation and finance of the Australian health system will be specifically analysed and compared internationally.

There will also be a reflection on equity in healthcare and the relationship between equity and efficiency in priority setting.

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